Jeremy Daum: Jeremy Daum is a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and the brains behind China Law Translate. Mr. Daum is a leading voice on the social credit system, and was the first Western scholar to dig into the policies behind the blacklisting system in any real depth.

Lin Junyue 林钧跃: Hailed as “the father of social credit theory”, sociologist Lin Junyue first proposed the idea of a social credit system in his seminal 1999 work, “The National Credit Management System” (国家信用管理体系). His subsequent work, “Social Credit System Theory” (社会信用体系原理), released in 2003, has heavily informed national policy. The SCS as it exists today largely mirrors the one Lin proposed almost 20 years ago.

Wu Weihai 吴维海: Wu Weihai is an academic and member of NDRC-affiliated think tank. His book, “Credit of a Great Nation” (大国信用), explores the social credit system through the eyes of Chinese regulators, and presents the SCS as a holistic mechanism directed at individuals, companies, and the government itself.